Kochi: Union Minister Shashi Tharoor once again made a strong plea for a Kerala High Court bench at Thiruvananthapuram, even as eminent jurist and former Supreme Court Judge VR Krishna Iyer said that he is against ‘slicing’ of the High Court.

Majority of the states have multiple benches, Tharoor, who represents Thiruvanthapuram in Parliament, said at a conference on the 'Future of Law, Justice and Governance in India', organized as part of the 99th birthday celebrations of Justice Krishna Iyer.

Criticizing the decision of the Bar Association to boycott the conference and issuing directive to lawyers to stay away from it, Tharoor said "This was a new low in the history of public life.”

“Those behind such things should be ashamed to call themselves lawyers and were 'disgrace' to the profession,” he said.

Tharoor said that he had looked forward to engaging with some leading members of the bar association on the question of High Court bench in the Kerala capital.

He said that the volume of cases in Kerala had grown so much that today there are at least 20,000 cases pending cases, 50 percent of which involve state government as litigant. The state government was spending over Rs 3 crore by way of TA/DA for officials to testify in the High Court, he said.

This was not only expenditure for government but officials had to be away from their work for at least two days, to appear for a few minutes before the High Court.